Star Trek Beyond Tops The Box-Office

The Justin Lin-directed “Star Trek Beyond” topped the box-office within the United States this weekend with $59.6 million. It’s a strong opening, but that number is down from the $75 million and $70 million openings of the two previous J.J. Abrams-directed “Star Trek” films.

Coming in at a budget of $185 million, the film also made a further $30 million from 37 global markets which, like the U.S. opening, were down by a similar 15-20% or so. The film has scored good critical reviews, and yet there’s also plenty of editorials and complaints within the reviews suggesting the new film essentially retreads old formula and in the process plays it far too safe with a familiar story.

Hopefully that will change with the next film with J.J. Abrams revealing last week to EW that the storyline for the upcoming fourth film is his “favorite Star Trek story that we’ve had. It really is an amazing story, it’s really the reason we made the deal with Chris Hemsworth as soon as we could because we really wanted that story to be told, so fingers crossed.”

Warners had a hit with the James Wan-produced “Lights Out” which pulled in an impressive $21.6 million to land in fourth place – excellent numbers for a film that cost less than $5 million to make. Fox’s animated sequel “Ice Age: Continental Drift” bombed on arrival, the costly feature opening to $21 million which is an opening at least $20 million lower than any of the four previous films in the series.

Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” fell an average 53% with a $21.6 million third place haul. The film also made more headlines this week as Mattel reported that sales of toys related to the film have exceeded expectations and been impressive amongst both boys and girls in terms of sales.

In China, the big box-office news was the Renny Harlin-directed, Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville-led comedy action film “Skiptrace” which scored a $60 million four day opening – easily taking the top spot and beating out rival “The Legend of Tarzan”.